Moving an aquarium

Phase one: a new home

It was decided: this year 2022 will start with moving house. While visiting new homes, the potential aquarium setup was to be considered. I mainly had 3 criteria:

The available size and space to move around the aquarium

The distance to the closest source of water (being kitchen, bathroom or garage)

The amount of natural light the aquarium would receive during the day

By following these three constraints, I am now quite satisified with the current sitting of the aquarium: it's 3-4m away from the bathroom sink, in the darkest part of the living room (though it still receives more daylight than before, i'll keep an eye out for algae). It also has sufficient room around it and in front of it to allow correct positionning of the hoses, electric plugs and easy access for maintenance.

Phase two: the return of anxiety

I must confess, I was quite worried about the moving day. I read several articles online, but I didn't really have a plan when the moving day eventually came. I knew the movers wouldn't (rather couldn't !) move the tank with the water and decor in, so I had to remove the fishes inside, the decor and the gravel.I had only two buckets at my disposal, and a few plastic bags that I had kept when I bought the fish. I've been suggested to buy these big water jugs, or jerricans, fill it with tank water and carry the fishes in it. But I didn't want to waste the water, or spend time finding a jerrican in my area (not that common here). So the buckets will have to do.

I knew that in the worst case, I would have to carry everything by hand. That would be ok: fortunately the new place was a 20 minutes walk in the city, without public transport. Would all the fish survive ? Would shuffling the gravel in the new tank cause an outbreak of some sort ? Will the plants be crushed or damaged ? How long would the whole process take ?

Phase three: the aquarist strikes back

On the moving day, the movers came one hour earlier, and I hadn't even started to empty the tank ! So that was the first bit of extra stress: though everything else was more or less ready when the movers arrived, the tank was still in its original setup. Off I went to remove the fish and shrimps (about 40 red cherry shrimp!), using the hand and fishnet technique. In the meantime, movers were coming and going carrying furnitures and boxes. It took me around one hour to remove the decor, syphon 20L of tank water in a bucket and move the fishes first in the bucket, then again in the plastic bags. I left the shrimps in the bucket for transport.

The movers accepted to take the bucket with 20L of gravel, slightly wet with aquarium water (but no apparent water on surface). That was a relief because that would have been really heavy to carry by hand, even for 20 minutes.

So at that point, I would hand carry a bucket of 15L of tank water with shrimps, plants, rocks and hardwood around the streets. The rest of the fishes would sit in plastic bags, in my backpack, in the dark. For the 20 minutes walk, I figured I didn't need to put some airstone or extra oxygen in the plastic bags, but to be safe I carried one with the bucket. I used some portable airpump that can charge on usb, I noticed in the end that it could last few hours. In the population of fish/shrimp/snails that were in the bags, only one snail died. Each fish/shrimp/snail had to be picked from the aquarium, carried around in a bucket and put back in the new location of the aquarium.

Conculsion

What a busy day that was. I started emptying the aquarium at around 10am, and the final shrimp joined the tank in the new place at 10pm, so a 12hour long ordeal. When I dismantled the aquarium, the water quality was quite low, since I noticed some kind of brown algea covering the driftwood. Thanks to this move, the gravel of the aquarium got mixed and after the initial few days of cloudy water following the move, the water quality seemed to have improved as I noticed growth on my anubias nana as well as bucephalendra which are both growing with the roots in the water column (epiphites). What a day !

Last edited on: 2022-04-10